The salt pans, coastal lookout towers and rural churches of Ibiza.

The salt pans are a magnificent example of artificial transformation of the landscape on a grand scale. By virtue of their perfect layout furrowed with straight lines between surfaces of different colours -depending un the different stages of crystallization of the saltthey offer a unique spectacle visible from the mountains nearby (Corp Marí, Cap Falcó, and Puig Maríns), and from above the airport.

The coastal watchtowers are fortified lookout points which together with the city walls form a protective system against invasion from the sea. The design of these towers is taken from Calvi's project for a defense tower for the salt pans, the island's principal source of wealth. The Santa Eulalia tower is unusual in that it is joined to the church, is accessible from the church roof, and has no inner space of its own. Due to their function these towers are situated at points where the views are exceptional, particularly the Es Savinar tower which looks onto the impressive mass of Es Vedrà.

Rural churches of Ibiza. The start the fourteenth century, the century which followed the Catalan conquest, saw the beginning of the construction on Ibiza oh the first four rural churches. From that moment until the present day a series of churches have been built which display a remarkable degree of architectural homogeneity despite the long periods over which they were constructed, reconstructed, repaired, and extended.

The permanence trough the history of the islands, of one idea of rural house based on a single type, and he skill of Ibiza's builders in synthesizing the type, adapting it to different uses and dimensions, explains the similarity which the churches -in which domestic architecture is clearly reflected- show in their appearnce and form.

Enrique Fajarnés, in his "Viaje a Ibiza" (Journey to Ibiza), makes this same observation, though in a more poetic fashion, writing about the Corona plain, Santa Inés :
"How suggestive are these rural churches of Ibiza hey are devoid of any distinguished forms; they have no desire to be monuments. They have, almost very one, the dimensions and air of peasant houses. The whiteness also. They would be indistinguishable from the handful of houses which stand guard around, were it not for their towers."

The ground plan of rural churches on Ibiza begins with a rectangular nave which, in the case of fourteenth-century churches was entered through a door on one of the long sides, while in later churches the entrance was situated on the longitudinal axis. The churches of San Antonio and San Miguel still have their original entrances.

Rural churches then underwent a series of additions to this central nave: porticoes, entrance courtyards, parsonages, and chapels.

These chapels are normally covered with square or octagonal and in a few cases, such as the Church of the dones Dominican Monastery in Ibiza, with a cupola and lantern. Along with the church tower they are the symbolic elements of the religious cult. On the inside they join the main nave without affecting it in any way.

The church of San Miguel has no side chapels but rather a considerable extension perpendicular to the old nave.

Historical styles have left their traces throughout the different construction stages of Ibiza churches; we can observe, for example, Gothic Styling on the domes of San Miguel, San Jorge, and Nuestra Señora de Jesús (pointed and with parpen arches), renaissance styling on the semicircular dome and the profite of the wall section -similar to the Ibiza walls- on the church of Santa Eulalia and baroque decoration in interiors and neoclassical twentieth-century forms on the bell towers of San Antonio, San Miguel and San Rafael.

These stylistic features have narrative value since occasionally they pinpoint periods of construction of specific parts of the church; and in every case they make a contribution to the personality of each one.

The form of the present-day churches became possible as their origina! defensive function began to lose importance. Witnesses to this function are the thick walls of the churches of San Jorge, San Miguel, Santa Eulalia and San Antonio, the massive tower of Santa Eulalia, the battlements of San Jorge, the presbytery tower of San Antonio and the system of protection. The church of Santa Eulalia is unique, with its builtin watchtower, its adjoining and clearly differentiated chapels and the strange position of the porch. facing the church and obscuring the domestic fa‡ade.

The whole complex, obtained from elements similar to those of the other churches and using the same adjoining system, has lost all similarity to a house and acquired its own integral personality.

The porch, with its triple arcade, is conceived for a publicf building and the way the light filters between it and the church itself has created one of the most beautiful effects in the whole of Ibiza architecture.